Email marketing is incredibly powerful for any business.
To ensure that you’re getting the most out of your emails to maximize your click through rate, it’s important that we consider the components of an email and their purposes.
Subject Line
The purpose of a subject line is to get the recipient to open the email.
It must be either engaging or generate enough curiosity so that they are interested in reading the content of the email.
Some structure that you may consider include:
- Asking a question
- Including the contact’s first name
- FW / RE
Be sure to mix up your subject lines.
I saw a business recently use a contact’s first name at the start of every email.
You can definitely do that, but highly recommend a varied approach so that you keep the contact interested.
Open Rates
Unfortunately open rates, no matter what email automation system you use are never 100%.
As you can probably appreciate, you may check an email on your phone in preview view but you never actually fully open the email, therefore it doesn’t register that the email was opened.
Always keep this in mind, that open rates will never be 100% accurate and you’re stats will no doubt be better than what you can see from your email provider.
Call To Action
Now that you have their attention, the purpose of the contents of the email is to get the contact to take action, typically click on a call to action (CTA).
Apart from newsletters, best practice email marketing only has one call to action per email.
This is to avoid confusion for the contact and make it really simple for them to work out what they need to do.
The call to action should be included above the fold or within the first few lines of an email.
With the busy world we live in, not everyone will make it to the bottom of your email to click a link.
Don’t be afraid to include a call to action multiple times within an email.
You may want to hyperlink different keywords with the link, however you want to give them multiple opportunities to take action. Three links within the body of an email (depending on the length) is a good number.
Copy
Try and personalize the email as much as you can.
If you’re using an email marketing system like Infusionsoft, you can use the Contact First Name and address it to them but also refer to them by their name in the email copy as well.
Try and make your sentences short and don’t be afraid to go to new lines for new sentences.
When you have very long paragraphs they can be very hard to read and the contact may not read them at all, or think that they’ll come back to it but they never do.
Also, read your email copy out loud. This will help you to check that the content flows and has your voice.
Your Audience
What I also find helpful is remember to whom you’re writing this for.
Use the language that they would use.
For example, if they refer to surfboards as surfboards, call them that, but if they call them boards, then you must use their terminology.
Be mindful also about their fears, issues, concerns, goals and aspirations.
What keeps them up at night?
Talk directly to what’s important to them, so they know that you get it and can help.
Finally if grammar and spelling isn’t your thing (and it’s definitely not mine!), check out Grammarly so that you can load up your content and check it in there.
Understanding and applying these fundamentals to email marketing can really help you to get more emails open, read, clicks to see your content/offers and ultimately more sign ups :).
(NOTE: Ready to use more automation in your business to make more sales with less effort – even if you don’t have a fancy system? Check out the Marketing Automation Game Plan and discover in this free 3-part video series the proven steps you must follow to successfully transform your business with automation. Learn more now.)
